Grey Heron in Kensington Gardens

Better in large ("L"): there was good light for heron portraits...

Today was another day where my blip plan changed dramatically: I reached the NHM very early this morning, and took photos of it looking dramatic and vast (accentuated by the emptiness) in the bright spring light...

It was a beautiful day, so a merry bunch of us went for a walk around Kensington Gardens at lunchtime. It was an excellent walk: we saw lots of spring flowers (crocuses, snowdrops, daffodils, blossom) and also lots of animal life both avian and (even) mammalian. There were two herons at the statue of Peter Pan: this one on a post in The Long Water, and one facing it on the grass on the other side of the path (next to the statue). I photographed both, with this one looking beautiful and majestic, and the other one looking rather silly in most of my pictures... It was standing far too upright, its legs looked all knock-kneed and awkward, it coughed for a while on what must have been a fur feather-ball, and looked baffled when I asked a colleague to distract (/imitate) it while I snuck up. That was a funny series of pictures: oh for an empty blipfolio (ideas?!).

We saw lots of birds (a parakeet up close, robins, great tits, starlings, various anatids and gulls, plus all the usual suspects) and also saw a bat flying around in the sun! It must have been disturbed by something; I'm not sure what species it was, but it was definitely larger than a pipistrelle.

p.s. I've put up a starling on my blipfolio (I swapped a starling for a starling): this one was singing very enthusiastically with its neck feathers all ruffed up (part of a courtship display). Its iridescent plumage was aglow in the bright spring light...